Memoria
by argante
Summary: Vignetteshort fic; Willow remembers.


Title: Memoria  
  
Author: Argante ((ravened_faith@hotmail.com))  
  
Pairing: Willow/Tara  
  
Spoilers: Between 'Villains' and 'Seeing Red'  
  
Rated: PG-13 ((allusions to slash; f/f relationship))  
  
Disclaimer: Do I look like Joss? No. Because if I was, would Tara be dead? No. Would Willow have gone evil-y? No. Would they still be together? Yes.  
  
Distribution: It is better to ask a question and be a fool for five minutes then to remain silent and be a fool forever. In other words, ask and you shall receive.  
  
Feedback: PLEASE!!  
  
It's quiet now, always quiet. Of course, it was quiet even when she was here, but this is a different type of quiet. Before, she was a reassuring presence. Now, the silence is heavy, oppressive even. For with this silence come the memories.  
  
Oh, you've always gotten memories, but they're amusing, pleasant ones that you find acceptable to have, the only ones you allow yourself to have. Occasionally an unpleasant one will slip past your guard, but that's ok, because it's only occasionally, and has nothing to do with her. You've been careful to keep all HER memories locked away. But sometimes, when you least expect, need or want it, one will come, unbidden, to the front of your memory.  
  
Like now.  
  
You're late for an important meeting, so you just reach in and grab a shirt out of the wardrobe, pulling it on quickly without even looking at it. It's only later, when you're applying your makeup and packing last minute things into your bag ((Giles always did emphasise preparation, and now you see why)) that you realise, the shirt you're wearing - it isn't yours, is it? It belongs to a shadow from your past, someone you've pushed to the edges of your mind and held in place with so many barricades it's a wonder it didn't take a tractor to plough through it.  
  
But no, it didn't take a tractor. Just a shirt. A shirt that, no matter how many times you wash it, STILL smells like her, and every time you look at it or put it on you think of her, and it's just SO her style that it's almost enough to make you scream.  
  
But you don't scream. No. Instead, you carefully peel the shirt off, take a single, baleful sniff as those first tears start to fall and fold it up, placing it in the furthest, darkest corner of your wardrobe before piling clothes and shoes and socks and books and papers and any other damn thing you can get your hands on on top of it.  
  
Because even as you close off that section of your long repressed memory, you can feel fragments of her slipping through. Long blonde hair, big blue eyes that always said 'I love you', endearing, sometimes annoying, stutters of nervousness.  
  
All there as you collapse both inside and out, crumbling to the floor in a flood of tears and rocking yourself, back and forth, back and forth, just like she used to do when you cried or just needed to be held.  
  
Because that was who and what she was, and you think you miss that the most. That comforting, yet silent, way she had of reassuring you that it would all be ok tomorrow. So you'd sleep, and when you woke up you'd head straight for her or call her if she wasn't there anyway, because she was home ((and God! There was no place like her))  
  
But she's gone now, and that shirt is a tangible reminder, a physical representation of how much you want her to be there. But she isn't, that God ((the one who's supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful. Right. Bullshit)) that you used to believe in has taken her from you and the rest of the world, and you're left wondering when it was that you got so bitter, but most of all, you're angry. Angry that she's gone, angry that you can never get her back, and angry because you could've stopped it and helped her, you know you could've, but you didn't.  
  
It's a white-hot, searing anger that burns you so suddenly that you've stopped rocking and crying now, and you're ripping away the piles and piles of crap you heaped desperately into your wardrobe. You're holding the shirt in your hands now, but you're just so damned angry that in a flash you've torn that shirt into several pieces with your bare hands.  
  
Slowly, the anger recedes and fades, and you find yourself standing in the bathroom, the tattered remains of that last physical memory - that last real, material connection - hanging limply from your shocked fingertips. And as you bundle them together numbly you feel the tears start again, rolling unchecked down your cheeks. Because now you've finally, truly realised that home is no more, just like that godforsaken shirt.  
  
You suddenly grasp with an unexpected clarity how very different things are without her, and as you slump heavily down onto the tiled floor ((you're sure that that hazy twinge of pain will hurt a whole lot more later on)) you realise that you'll never, ever be home again. 


End file.
